Eyes Have Not Seen
by Mia-Hood
Summary: [Contact] A series of vignettes about Ellie and Kent. EllieKent Ya gotta love the blind guy!
1. When We Met

**When We Met**

When we first met, you were listening. Not many people do that anymore. Of course, I hadn't the option. Listening was the simplest road.

You were brilliant and driven and, most likely, beautiful and yet you were happy and excited about every discovery, every pindrop of sound that might have been even remotely promising. I could tell almost immediately the passion you felt, that burned deep. It encouraged me more than anything else had.

When we first met, I missed your hand.

You didn't know that I couldn't see your outstretched appendage and so you also didn't know that I am used to it by now. I almost never miss. Most people can hardly tell. I make it so easy to ignore that I cannot see what you can. I was excited about meeting you, excited enough not to aim.

It had always been a leap in the dark anyway. A handshake, I mean. One can never tell just by sound or smell where a hand is going to land. Only by feel, by a lucky guess, will one get it right without one's utmost sense.

Sight. Something I had thought I had forgotten but the loss hit me hard now.

I could feel rather than hear the confused pause in your voice as you repositioned your hand, clasping mines briefly. Ellie. Just plain Ellie. That was how you introduced yourself to me, the meek, ironically named, Dr. Kent Clark. I knew you had deduced my condition already.

I felt fumbled and ignorant and blunt. I admit my first impression wasn't as welcoming as I had wanted it to be. I chide myself most on the stumble and pause I made when explaining your purpose there for the team. I regret it though I know you were probably used to it, you probably didn't even spare it a thought; you were too determined to.

You are everything that I am not.

Excluding, perhaps, the brilliant part. Many people have called me that, you in particular. I would not call you a liar, not in a million years, but I prefer a smaller word like 'smart' rather than the extravagance of a word like 'brilliant'.

When I repeated what Drumlin had said about you, I meant it to be a joke. The truth was that I had admired you even before I had met you, just by that description. But you were so much more committed than that! It made me feel alive again.

Really the point is that when we first met, neither of us knew what we would become.


	2. Not Finished Yet

**Not Finished Yet**

Beep.

Beep.

Beep.

The sound of my headset woke me with a start. I quickly clicked a few keys to get it to shut up and looked up to see Kent outside. I was surprised to see him up so early. It was always good to see the shy but incredibly intelligent doctor, however, so I set my computer to hibernate before I went outside to speak to him.

Kent looked upset through the window, but once I opened the door he seemed to pull himself together.

"Ellie?"

I didn't even blink. Of course he knew it was me. It was my shift and I was normally the only one in this early.

"Hey, Kent. What are you doing up this early?"

I wasn't looking at his face - my thoughts were too consumed with a certain eccentric frustratingly practical man of the cloth - but if I had been I probably would have seen what was coming.

"I was thinking …" Kent's voice held a slight tremor to it, but it was gone with his next sentence. "We'd make a pretty good team."

I looked at him then, not understanding. "What?"

"We could put together a kick-ass ad hoc SETI program." I could tell he was alluding to something, something bad. Why would we need to put together another program? Besides, Kent only swore when he was nervous.

"What are you talking about?" The feeling in the pit of my stomach was not boding well for the conversation.

"You know the Very Large Array in New Mexico?" He ignored my question yet again as he began to rant in what bordered on a panicked way. "It would be a dynamite place to do SETI work –"

"What are you talking about, Kent?" Now I was getting a bit panicky. Why did he always dance around the point when he spoke? I swear, sometimes I just felt like ringing his scrawny neck …

Kent paused. He swallowed, trying to gather his courage no doubt.

"Drumlin pulled the plug."

I felt my world stop, if only for a moment.

Right when I had everything I could have ever possibly hoped for, _this_ happened. The swell of defeat consumed me for a second. Lost. Everything was lost …

_No!_ This was my dream! My goal! I couldn't give up. I wouldn't give up!

"We're homeless."

I was out the door almost before Kent finished.


End file.
